Right-pointing carets in Android

Question

I'm an android dev, trying to follow the awesome Android Design Guidelines.

In one of them the doc tells me:

Don't use right-pointing carets on line items

A common pattern on other platforms is the display of right-pointing carets on line items that allow the user to drill deeper into additional content.

Android does not use such indicators on drill-down line items. Avoid them to stay consistent with the platform and in order to not have the user guess as to what the meaning of those carets may be."

Source: https://developer.android.com/design/patterns/pure-android.html

BUT lately, I've seen right-pointing carets in Google's own apps (Google maps' place reviews page, the Google Chromecast app), please see the screenshots below:

So My question is: Should we (developers) use right-pointing carets or not?

Answer 1

The guidelines actually specifically say:

Don't use right-pointing carets on line items

The example shows a list of line items:

The individual examples you've shown are more like isolated buttons so they're not really breaking the guidelines.

It's also important to remember that guidelines aren't rules. If you have a good reason to break the guidelines then it's fine to do so. In both examples you gave it wouldn't be obvious that those items are clickable without the caret.